Cycling Around the Ford Focus Electric

​ About that hatch…the achilles heel of the Focus Electric. Yes, it’s small, but Ford has made it functional.

A measured drawing, not drawn to scale, follows:

​ There are both an upper shelf, where you see the milk in the photo above and under which the battery lives, and a deeper, lower shelf, in which Ford supplied a three-section, divided, closed-cell foam bin (photo below). Note that this bin can be removed to reveal an even deeper well where the portable cord and the flat repair kit are kept.

​ You’d have trouble packing in more than a couple of overnight bags. Fortunately, the hinged shelf behind the second row headrests is removable, if needed.

If you prop up the shelf, the one immediately above that bin and on which the milk is sitting in the photo above, with something of similar height inside the center section of the bin, it makes a flat platform that can lie even with the upper shelf.

Otherwise, the rearward shelf, the one above the bin, slopes downward. Anything you put here would fall out the vehicle’s back. The bottom line is that you don’t buy this car to be a cargo hauler. In fact, it might be more convenient to load grocery bags into the second row.